Bulletproof
by Girl on the Wing
Summary: [WiP] “Not exactly the backup I was hoping for,” she commented as he neared. Sarkney.
1. Chapter One

**Disclaimer:** JJ owns (my soul) Alias. I don't. Crap.

**A/N:** This fic is somewhat AU in terms of timeline – suffice to say Sark is working for Irina and Sydney is aware Irina is her mother. So, combine season 1 and 2 and there you are.

**Bulletproof **

Chapter One 

The sun setting over the Mexican horizon turned the sky a deep, bleeding red melting into foam clouds, the evening settling in across the shadowy peaks of the distant mountaintops. Sydney found the color disturbingly appropriate, seeing as the stain of Irina Derevko's blood splattered the front of Sydney's suit and her mother's body lay crumpled on the dusty ground before her. Sydney had been waiting for the backup team for nearly an hour now, and she shielded her eyes briefly as the last of the glaring light of day disappeared behind the tiny stone building, the crumbling four walls that had served as Irina's hideout for the past eight months. The house was nearly overgrown with thick, waxy leaves and trusses of blackened flowers, once the rusted orange color of the sky as it faded away into night. Now they more resembled the shade of Sydney's hands, tinted with reddened copper, dark across her fingertips.

Sydney hadn't look down at Irina's body since the bullets had screamed from the gun almost an hour ago. The sound of the shots, crackles of life being sucked from the tiny marks where the bullets had exited her body. Her eyes widening with initial shock before seeming to narrow with snakelike pride, a silent hiss of satisfaction passing as an unspoken understanding between mother and daughter. Sydney remembered every second of it in crystal frame-by-frame motion.

Falling;

Irina's body hadn't collapsed, but rather, fallen with a fluid grace releasing all her limbs.

Contorting;

Her eyes had closed. Not shut, but closed, her eyelashes swept across her strong cheekbones, her features struggling to stay livened.

Exhaling.

Her eyes had finally deadened as breath seemed to whisper through her, shivering away.

Sydney closed her eyes, the first cool breeze of the evening brushing her cheeks and loosening a few stray wisps of hair to tickle her face, but she couldn't feel it. A numbness spreading from her shoulder, up the stiff muscles of her neck and down her spine began to set in fully, and she thought she couldn't feel herself breathing.

Somehow Sydney became dimly aware of a clipping sound in the distance, creeping into the distance of the death scene previously so perfectly constructed. The sound grew louder as it neared, and it wasn't until the jacket of her suit began to blow back from her shoulder, provoking a sharp impulse of pain rocketing down her arm that she looked up and squinted at the dark mass hovering in the sky. She now recognized the blades of the helicopter deafening the silence of the desert as the chopper touched down a few feet away, a black shine outlining the interior as a familiar figure stepped out, pressed suit and sunglasses evidently tailored even in the waning light. His gait was purposeful with the slightest air of arrogance, something she could pick out in a crowd, as he made his way over to her, and she could feel his icy blue eyes boring into her, even from here. A team of men in standard black outfits dispensed from the helicopter as well to examine the scene, but Sydney ignored all of them and instead concentrated on the horizon as the man strode towards her.

"Not exactly the backup I was hoping for," she commented as he neared, and when he reached her he whipped off his sunglasses and his youthful features hardened, making him, ironically enough, all the less threatening when he demanded, "What happened?" His eyes scanned the bodies strewn across the ground, most recently, that of his late employer.

"You were right," Sydney replied. She turned to him and looked at him fully for the first time, her face void of the slightest hint of emotion.

He glared at her. "I didn't mean for you to—"

"This is what it came down to," Sydney said, her eyes resting on the lifeless forms before her, and she felt for a moment as though it was her the team was kneeling over, feeling for a pulse that had long since ceased into the stillness of the earth beneath her feet. "Somehow, I always knew it would," she said softly.

Sark sighed, running a hand over his face, and Sydney thought he looked tired, too tired, she thought, to be dealing and dealing with death all in one day. She reached up and touched his face, and he turned in slight surprise. He met her eyes, searching them for a trace of the fragility he knew rested right below the stubborn streak she'd inherited, but jerked away when he noticed her stained fingers. "Whose blood is this?" he said, taking her hand in his and dropping it just as quickly. His eyes ran up the rest of her body, rigid with absorption of the day behind her, and he reached forward. "You're bleeding—"

Sydney turned away before his fingers could brush her shoulder, where a deep stain had spread in a blot across the fabric of her jacket.

"Don't touch me," she murmured. Sark sighed and turned his attention the team examining the bodies. They worked like machines; they had to, Sydney thought, to touch death without a second thought.

"You need to get that taken care of," Sark said, indicating her shoulder. He rubbed his eyes before replacing his sunglasses and fixing Sydney with a thousand-yard stare.

She stared out at the horizon, not really seeing the spread of dark across the endless sky, casting deep shadows across the desert and beginning to reveal the first flecks of stars against the background of a velvet void. "It's just a graze," she said, her eyes focused on a fixed point of nothing across the mountaintops.

"Sydney, I can see the bullet from here." His British accent made the remark all the more biting.

Sydney didn't bother to respond, instead folding her arms across her chest and studying the team shining the flashlights in her mother's eyes, taking blood samples, the same blood dried on her own hands – the thought startled Sydney, and she briefly felt sick, her stomach twisting at the glimpse of the face that had attended her first dance recital when she was three years old. Sydney's eyes narrowed at the memory cropping up, at how easy it was to recall being swept into waiting arms as a little girl backstage, her face shining with exhaustion and excitement from the lights of the stage and the roaring of the audience. Sydney shut her eyes, willing away the memory of happiness and caring and the scent of her mother's perfume when she had buried her head in her neck, Irina's arms holding her, her fairy wings attached to the hot costume getting in the way.

Sark noticed the change passing over her features, and when he took her arm and she tried to pull away, his grip remained tight enough to keep her in place, though not enough to hurt her. Yet.

"Come on. The team is ready to go." He nodded to the men, who had replaced the bodies of Irina and her surrounding officers with dark zippered bags on the ground, nothing more than long shapes in the darkness. He led her toward the helicopter wordlessly, and she didn't protest, though something in the back of her mind told her that she probably shouldn't be getting into a helicopter with a man whose boss she had just killed. That was who Irina Derevko was, she reminded herself, Sark's boss. Enemy of the United States. Not Sydney's mother.

Never that.

* * *

The bed, she thought, was the softest thing she had ever felt when she sunk onto it upon entering the hotel room. Sydney made her way blindly to the bed, shrugging out of her jacket and crawling atop the bed, laying on her stomach and resting her head on her arms as she watched the city lights winking in the distance. The night air drifting in from the open window was cool, and the deep blue background dotted with buildings and billboards illuminating Mexico City created a stillness in the room. Sark moved behind her, taking off his jacket and tossing it on the chair, setting his gun on the dresser – Sydney knew his movements so well, she could pinpoint exactly where he was in the room at any given movement, even when she closed her eyes and breathed in the first quiet she'd experienced all day. While she was waiting for the backup team alone with her mother's body, that hadn't been quiet – it had been deafening silence, nearly too much to bear. This was something else entirely, a sort of serenity, despite the ache in her shoulder and the exhaustion settled in her muscles. 

The bed sunk a few inches with his weight as he sat down beside her. She ignored the feeling that seemed to creep up when he neared, one that could make her aware of his presence before sound or sight. Sydney didn't flinch when he touched her shoulder, barely feeling his fingers brushing skin through her thin shirt, but he spoke quietly anyway. "Don't move," he said, and a hot pain electrified her skin when his hands moved across the tender area of her injured shoulder. Sydney bit her lip so hard she tasted blood in her mouth, like bitter silk on her tongue. Sark made no effort to be gentle, nor was he careless: he simply did what needed to be done. It was a way of doing things Sydney knew they had all learned over years in the field, over hundreds of bullets and even more bodies; it was a way to survive. Get in the job, do the job, get out. Do what needs to be done.

She knew Sark couldn't have been born this way; some people were, but the fluidity of his movements, the crystal calm in his eyes, wouldn't allow it. Not only that, but they predisposed him to learn it easily, how to live a whole new way, a whole new life. It came easy to him, like many things, it seemed: the confident stare, the way his shoulders set when he walked, strong and leaned back, as if about to take a bullet. The smirk tugging on the corner of his lips, however, let you know you wouldn't get a bullet by him before he had planted three in your head.

Now he moved with the same assurance, caution always present, but never manifesting itself. He wore gloves; she wondered briefly where he'd gotten them, then remembered that of course he'd have everything he needed to cover his tracks wherever he went. Sark lifted the torn fabric embedded in the wound, and she gasped; it was a like a new layer of skin being peeled away. Sark made no acknowledgement. He simply pressed the fabric back and finally said, "This is going to hurt." He reached into her shoulder and pulled out the bullet lodged in her flesh, and Sydney thought he might have ripped off her entire arm. A shock of white-hot pain exploded in her shoulder with the bullet's removal and proceeded to dart down her arm and behind her eyes. She fought down the cry threatening to escape her throat.

It was just a job, after all.

The darkness seemed to envelop the room further when the pain erupted in Sydney's shoulder; she let her eyes adjust to the new darkness as she felt Sark press a warm, wet cloth to her skin, wiping away the blood. He covered the hole in the skin once he had finished cleaning the wound, taping a bandage across it across her tender shoulder. She shuddered involuntarily, and thought she saw his shadow leaning over her on the bedspread. His lips brushed across her skin, and she struggled to keep the shiver from creeping up her back.

Sydney felt him rise and leave the bed to move to the armchair near the sliding glass door to the balcony. The moonlight cast unusual shapes on some of his features, and sharply angled shadows on others. He looked barely human, so stiff in the chair, the darkness of the room surrounding his slim figure. Sydney started to ease up off the bed, but the dangerously soft click of a gun being cocked stopped her just as the first spark of agony shot through her shoulder in sharp threads.

Sydney's mind began to race. The exits of the room sprang to mind – the front door, the sliding glass door a few feet away, the window in the bathroom. She searched in her mind for her gun, but remembered it rested in her jacket pocket on the chair. _Damn._

"You'll rip it open again if you move too much," Sark said in a bored voice, as though explaining to a small child why they couldn't jump off the swings. Sydney closed her eyes in determination; she couldn't stay with her back turned, completely vulnerable to the unpredictability that was Sark. She pushed up off the bed and tested her balance, still leaning on the edge of the bed.

"I do wish you'd follow directions, Ms. Bristow. I will be highly unamused if you force me to pull this trigger and I'd have to bandage you up all over again." Sark sounded annoyed with her disobedience, like shooting her was simply another irritant he had to deal with. Sydney wheeled around to face him, gripping the bedpost unsteadily, finding the gun resting on his knee, pointed at her lazily. She looked at him, trying to read the expression behind his eyes, the color a mix of moonlight and night sky, dissolved in shadows. He simply stared back, his face emotionless.

"You won't do it." Sydney asserted the statement with bated breath, watching him carefully, every inch of her alert.

"Really." Sark's eyes swept over her, and she felt her blood drop a few degrees. "You're awfully confident for someone who can't even stand up."

Sydney raised her chin in defiance. "I can stand," she countered, hating how her voice sounded, arguing an aimless point. Sark looked at her, and Sydney got the impression that if he could put forth the effort, he would raise an eyebrow at her. Her features hardened, and she let go of the bedpost, taking a shaky step forward. The masses in the room resembling furniture shifted a little, and Sydney closed her eyes briefly and swayed. She felt her shoulder spiraling with a burning sensation, and a hand closed over her arm in an iron grip. Sydney opened her eyes and found Sark's face close to hers, his features displaying disdain and something that, if she hadn't been so woozy, she might've thought could have been construed as concern.

"You've lost a lot of blood. Sit down," Sark said, exasperated. She obeyed without the energy to put forth reluctance, and Sark released her arm after a moment. Sydney rubbed it unconsciously, trying to ignore the different kind of burning she felt when he backed away from her and settled into the chair again. Sydney refused to meet his eyes, staring at the carpet illuminated in the moonlight shining from the balcony through the sliding glass door. The gun had resumed its place on Sark's knee, and he frowned as he looked at her. She glanced up, noticing the expression he wore.

"What?" she said, returning the frown and turning it to more of a glare.

Sark opened his mouth to reply with another snarky comment, but to Sydney's surprise, he closed it after a moment, instead choosing to shake his head and close his eyes, resting back against the chair. "Nothing," he muttered, running a hand over his face and looking out to the balcony, his features exhausted. Exhausted, and so worn, she thought, for someone so young.

She couldn't even begin to comprehend what all that was supposed to mean; Sark was never someone to be at a loss for words. Perhaps he was simply too tired to deal with her anymore, making her feel more and more like nothing more than an annoyance he kept having to put up with, a role she found not to her liking. Sydney hesitated for a moment, then swiftly stood up, regretting it as soon as her feet hit the floor, having to grab the bedpost tightly to prevent herself from falling backwards. Sark turned back, and his eyebrows narrowed as he stood from the chair quickly. "For goodness sake, Sydney, do you not understand—"

But Sydney never got to find out what she didn't understand, for she reached to him and pulled him forward, her hand on the back of his neck, and pressed her lips to his urgently in a fierce kiss. He tensed up for only a moment before responding, parting his lips and exploring her mouth with his, his hands sliding to her waist, a support Sydney was grateful for in her current state. His fingers brushed her stomach lightly as her tongue flicked into his mouth briefly, and she moaned into his lips as the kiss intensified. Sark's hands dipped under the thing material of her shirt, brushing across her stomach running electric lines across the warmth of her skin. Sydney kissed him harder, aching to feel him against her, needing every inch of her body to be touching his, and the way his hands stroked lightly right beneath her breast, never touching it, threatened to drive her mad. Her mind spun with the loss of blood and the rush of it to her head as Sark broke the kiss the trace her jaw line with his mouth, and all of a sudden the dizziness amplified until she could barely see the room lined around her. Sark pulled away.

"Sydney." He sounded annoyed, though his eyes were round with an icy sympathy he was obviously trying to hide. Still holding her waist, her hands gripping his shoulders for support, she noticed somewhere back of her mind that his shoulders were broader than she would've expected, delicate sinew and stretches of masculinity. He frowned at her. "Lay down. You need some rest."

She glanced at the bed, a queen-sized that looked massively larger in the shadows of the moonlight beneath her swimming vision. She looked back at him, her eyes narrowing. "If you think for one second I'm going to let you—"

"Shut _up,"_ he said, not unkindly, "and lay down."

She did. The wooziness finally took over as her muscles seem to virtually sink into her skin, crawling onto the bed. With some difficulty, she managed to pull back the covers and clamber under, shivering when her tender shoulder brushed the sheets. The room grew dim, the silhouettes of night and distant buildings shifting over the balcony edge, and with Sark's eyes on her, she turned to face away from him. Lowering her eyes to the lines of the bed jutting out against the darkness of the floor won't fool him, and with a sigh she closes her eyes, unsettled at the thought of her enemy watching her with no way to defend herself unless she sensed him coming for her, which, in any other state, she might have been able to do. Now, however, she listened with every inch of her worn body tensed, listened to him stride across the room and slide out of his clothes, listened to the handle of the gun palmed and set on the bedside table. Finally, she listened to him slip under the sheets beside her, almost able to feel the heat radiating from him even then, but it could've just been the fever flowing under her skin.

Sark turned to lie opposite her, facing his own edge of the bed, and Sydney almost felt herself relax the slightest bit. She shifted carefully, trying to stay alert, but her bones seem to scream for the softness of the bed and she found herself unable to hold back the deep waves of sleep that threatened to overcome her at any moment, and finally she acquiesced.

* * *

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	2. Chapter Two

**Disclaimer:** JJ owns (my soul) Alias. I don't. Crap.

**Bulletproof**

Chapter Two

The day seemed to make even less sense when Sydney awoke; the room seemed smaller than before, and tinted gray. The sunlight streaming through the blinds covering the glass door to the balcony was blindingly bright in the shade of her vision, and she made a noise of frustration, turning away from the window and keenly aware of the cold sheets over her bare shoulders. She buried her head in her pillow, trying to remember why the ache in her body seemed to be settling somewhere inside as well.

Flashes of the night before came flooding back. Gunshots swirling in her head, her mother—no. Irina Derevko's body limp on the ground. A whirring sound, beating blades against her mind's attempts to stop the room from hurting so much. She no longer felt so dizzy, or even as weak, but rather, her joints seemed to be bending the completely wrong way, and her limbs were settled into a dull state of numbness, so she could barely feel where her arm rested on the bed.

A sudden wave of nervousness washed over Sydney. _My arm. I can't feel my—_

She sat straight up, the sheets tangled in her legs, and grabbed Sark by the shoulders where he had been sleeping peacefully beside her. He awoke with a start, but by the time he realized what was happening Sydney had already flipped him onto his stomach and pinned him to the bed, her knee digging into his back. She held his face to the mattress. "What have you done to me?" she hissed.

His reply sounded somewhat amused. "I haven't the slightest idea what you're talking about, Ms. Bristow, though I must say, such a rude awakening is entirely—" his words were buried in the mattress as she shoved his head down.

"I can barely feel my arms and legs," she said in a _don't-screw-with-me-or-I-won't-hesitate-to-suffocate-you_ voice. "What did you _do?"_ Sark gave a muffled response.

Sydney allowed him room to turn his head and speak clearly. "Oh, that." He paused, as though trying to remember everything he had done to Sydney Bristow last night. "I injected you with a simple pain reliever. It was supposed to help with your wound."

"Pain reliever my ass. Are you recording all this right now, so the truth serum will start making me spout information for you to take back to your master? Oh, wait." Sydney leaned closer so she was right next to him, her breath tickling his ear. "Your master's dead."

"Not my master. Your mother," Sark said, not missing a beat.

Sydney released him and moved from the bed, standing up by the window glinting with the red glow of morning sun through the blinds. She tried not to shiver, the very illusion of sunlight so far from home giving her the chills. "If that's what you think, you're not as smart as I gave you credit for," she said softly. She slid open the glass door to the balcony and stepped outside, resting on the stone edge of the balcony's railing. Moments later, Sark came up beside her, the sheets laying in abandoned tangles on the bed.

There was only quiet for what seemed like ages. The morning was slowly sinking into a newborn day, and the outlines of buildings were silhouetted against a backdrop of lazy pink and melting orange. Sydney let her mind drop into the numbness now fading from her body, ignoring Sark's words and the reality of blood ties she couldn't seem to escape, no matter how far she traveled around the globe killing the very people her mother – Irina Derevko had considered allies.

"You've changed so much."

Sark's voice tread carefully, husky and soft as though he was trying not to frighten a skittish animal. Sydney lifted her chin and stared out at the edifices gleaming a darkened silver, refusing to acknowledge his statement as truth she feared or lies she could deal with. One of the many things in her life that needed fixing, she thought.

Sark moved closer to her, leaning down to brush her bare skin with his lips. Sydney tensed, angry at him for managing to curve himself right into the corner of her mind where she kept things to Not Dwell On. Right now it was occupied by Irina's eyes, glassy and black against her pale, drawn face and the angles of her cheekbones Sydney knew matched her own.

"It was only a few years ago I would've seen a smile on your face before my very presence wiped it off," Sark said, his words sweeping over her neck, and she thought she could feel him smirk against her skin. "Now, there's nothing left for me to touch." His fingers stroked her shoulder, delicate steps down her arm and tapping the inside of her wrist. He ran his thumb over a scar carved into her wrist and up the palm of her hand.

"I remember this," he whispered. "Prague. Two years ago."

The light bathed the balcony in a fire-tinted, porcelain glow, and she closed her eyes to breathe in the morning air. Not to feel his hands dancing lightly across hers.

"One of Irina's associates," Sark said softly. Sydney did not flinch at the name.

"I was waiting for you at the end of the hallway, and he tackled you with a knife. You almost lost a finger." He nearly chuckled, and something boiled inside of Sydney.

"When we got back to the hotel, you were bleeding, and I said—"

"Fuck the CIA," Sydney finished.

This time he did chuckle. "I made you come up to my room so I could bandage it. You fussed the entire time. Nearly punched me at one point, when I poured the alcohol on it, if I remember correctly."

Sydney actually laughed, and the sound startled her. "That's because you don't exactly have the world's best bedside manner." She glanced up to meet his eyes for the first time since last night, and they were a sheer, crystalline blue tinted with cream-colored light of the sun, playing off the pale lowlights of his skin. He smiled at her, a gesture that always came off as slighted with cockiness, though she had learned now to see through into the softest of hints there was something else slightly more tolerable under that smile. He leaned in to kiss her, and Sydney met his lips with hers, bringing her hand up to hold him close while they kissed.

He pulled away, the smirk returning, and said, "Then you _did_ punch me for endangering your position at the CIA."

"You deserved it."

"I didn't." His voice was full of mock hurt. "Besides, no one made you come up to my room. That, Ms. Bristow, was entirely your will." He moved to kiss her again, capturing her mouth with his, and Sydney was struck slightly off-balance as his tongue swept across hers, and she wrapped her arms around his shoulders to keep steady.

"Why do you still call me that?" she murmured into his lips. He only kissed her harder before mumbling, "What?"

"Ms. Bristow." She let her mouth linger over his, until he could barely stand it. She smiled against his mouth. "Makes me feel old."

Sark grinned at this, an expression she was unused to seeing, and it took her a moment to even figure out what he was doing. "Formalities, Ms. Bristow. We are, after all, still colleagues."

"We're anything but colleagues," Sydney replied, tracing his jaw line with her tongue, enjoying the shiver she could feel him struggling to suppress. "We're mortal enemies."

"If that's so—" he gasped slightly when her mouth dipped to his collarbone, "then why are you trying to seduce me, Sydney?"

Sydney looked up from his chest, her eyes dancing. Sark frowned. "I didn't say you could stop."

She smiled and began trailing kisses down his neck, her teeth leaving barely traceable bite marks where she wanted to make him groan, and he did when she reached a spot just behind his ear, her hands bracing his shoulders.

Suddenly, Sark pulled away, and Sydney looked up at him, confused. His eyes were glinting with what she would've mistaken for malice a few short years ago, but now, her pulse racing against her skin knew better.

"Bed. Now." He said with an inarguable conviction, and a smile spread over her lips.

"Make me," she whispered against his neck.

In one swift move he had scooped her up and was carrying her to the bed, and she opened her mouth to protest when he dropped her a little less than gently onto the disheveled sheets. Before she could get a word out, however, his mouth was on hers in a fierce hunger she was less than inclined to deny, and he was practically tearing at her thin shirt, fighting to get it over her head. Finally, the shirt was tossed to the floor, and Sydney turned her head when he bent to kiss her again, half to punish him, half to let his mouth trace over neck. Sark growled into the curve of her neck, pinning her to the bed by her arms, but always careful to avoid the tender wound burned into her shoulder.

His hands slid down her stomach, and Sydney kicked the sheets out of the way, aching to feel his body pressed to hers. Sark obliged, laying down so their legs were tangled and he was kissing her chest. Her breathing was shallow, hitching when he reached her navel his tongue drew circles on her skin, and she tangled her fingers in his close-cropped hair when he unzipped her pants and slipped them off, his mouth dipping lower. She swallowed the moan rising in her throat and shut her eyes, his breath warm on her thighs, and his fingers brushed across her hips, just barely holding her down. Time felt as though it were rushing in her head before Sark finally looked up, a wickedly knowing expression on his face. He rose to lay atop her once more, and when his eyes met hers, they registered what she was going to do a split second before she flipped him on the bed, straddling him. He raised an eyebrow at her, but she simply reached down to slide the boxers off his legs, briefly fingering the scar lining his thigh, compliments of their work in Siberia a few years ago. She traced the thin white line, and he grabbed her wrist suddenly, his grip tightening to the point of nearly hurting her. Sydney raised her eyes to his, and they were as fierce as she remembered meeting them in the field every time they were pitted against each other. It was a sharp reminder, almost painful, of the lives that awaited them both outside the dark sun pouring into the hotel room.

Moments later both were fighting not to cry out against the other's shoulder, and the walls seemed to lean in as he moved inside her, and Sydney though she might have bitten hard enough to draw blood from Sark's pale skin, a drop of copper running down the porcelain curve of his shoulder, stars slowly dying behind her eyes. Sark's breathing was shallow to match her own, and he rested his cheek on the dip of her collarbone, his heart beating lazily against hers as the sun was beginning to finally rise above the boxes framing the sky, as unwilling to begin the day as they were.

Sydney almost found herself drifting off to sleep again, when Sark's voice, very annoyed, said in her ear, "You bit me."

She closed her eyes, trying to block the light filling the room from by the glow in front of her eyelids. "Sorry."

"You aren't." He rolled off her, and she heard him shifting on the bed, nudging her with his foot.

She kicked him back, and he made an indignant noise. "Not particularly, no," she replied. "Besides, it's hardly comparative to what you've done to me over the years."

"Excuse me?" She opened her eyes to find Sark leaning over her, his eyes wide in defense. Sydney held back a smile. It was really too easy sometimes.

"You're the one who threw an axe into my leg," he accused her, and he sat up, running a hand through his tousled blonde hair.

She smiled, his slim figure outlined with half-shadows and the strains of morning shifting through the blinds, and said, "You probably deserved it."

"Well, that's hardly fair." He rose from the bed, shrugging on his white button-up shirt tossed on the back of the chair. He turned to slip into his boxers, and Sydney's eyes shifted to his gun lying on the bedside table. She looked at his back turned to her, and kept her vision trained on him as she started to slide over to his side of the bed, the gun within inches of her reach–

"I wouldn't do that if I were you," he said, his voice as careless as his movements. He turned to face her and slipped another gun out of the pockets of his pressed black pants, pointing it at her with a sigh as though she were some annoying child who kept touching breakable things after being told a hundred times not to.

Sydney locked eyes with him. "There's a lot of things we'd do differently." His eyes flashed, and in one swift movement she had grabbed the gun and rolled off the bed to stand facing him, their guns nearly touching.

Neither moved for a moment, until Sark sighed again and said, "Go ahead, then, if you're so quick-thinking. Shoot me."

Sydney gripped the gun tighter. "What?"

"I daresay you'll find it to be lacking ammunition. So, have at it." He cocked an eyebrow, and Sydney felt that familiar annoyance boil up inside her. Sark had always been able to get to her, always been able to tap into her so easily. It was part of what made him a good agent, even if it was for the wrong side, a worthy opponent. She wouldn't call it exactly admirable, but...

_Something like that._

Sydney hesitated for a moment. She had little doubt he was lying, but if she gave it up now it left her completely vulnerable, rather than defense with a gun that may or may not be loaded. Sark simply stood watching her, as though quite interested himself what she was going to do. Finally, she whirled around and fired at the mirror on the opposite wall. The glass shattered with the bullet's eruption from the barrel and the sound was spectacular; shards of glass blasted from the wall and raining down upon them, the frame hanging uselessly from the nail. Sark ducked and hid his face to avoid the sharp edges spiraling toward him, and Sydney moved forward instantly to tackle him. He hit the ground and yelled out in pain when his forearm dug into a razor-edged piece of the mirror on the carpet, and Sydney grabbed his gun, dropped in the struggle. She stood quickly and pointed both guns at him, and he stumbled to his feet, holding his arm where a stain of red was billowing through.

Sark looked up at her from his arm, breathing labored, and smiled. "You never did take my word for things."

"That's because you're a sociopath," she replied.

Sark looked hurt. "I resent that. I only lie when necessary. You obviously knew I wouldn't fight you unless we were evenly matched. It's only fair." Sydney snorted at his admission of 'fair'.

"So you lied to me first? For what, to see if I'd believe that the gun was empty?"

"Obviously," Sark said, pulling off his jacket and heading toward the bathroom, as though completely unaware of the two loaded weapons trained on him. He took a towel from the rack and pressed it to his wound, a fairly deep cut by his elbow. The white towel was stained with a half moon-shaped trace of red when he pulled it away. "If you believed something like that so easily, especially coming from me," he pressed the towel to his cut again and winced slightly, "You're not the agent the CIA seems to believe you to be."

"Glad I could prove you wrong," Sydney said, her eyes never leaving him, the guns aimed directly at his head. Without warning, Sark moved toward her, and she nearly pulled the trigger out of pure surprise. He gave her an odd look as he slipped by her to exit the bathroom, and pulled a wrap of bandage out of his bag by the chair. "You never had to prove anything to me, Sydney, you must know that. The only one who knew of your caliber more than I-" he began to unravel the bandage, "–was your mother." He paused with the bandage for a moment, then held it out to her. "Would you like to do this?" he offered. "Since I was so kind to do the same for you last night."

"I'm sure you can manage," Sydney said, and Sark frowned.

"I must say, Ms. Bristow, your lack of courtesy is really starting to aggravate me. If it weren't for me, you wouldn't have either of the two weapons you have turned against me at this moment, so a little thanks wouldn't kill you." He started to unravel the bandage, wrapping it around his forearm fairly clumsily, but managing to tape it at the end. Sydney held her breath. She would not let him get to her like this, though she could hardly believe his brashness to do so with two guns focused on him.

Sark finally managed to get the bandage taped around his arm, and he gave her an annoyed look as he sat down to put his shoes on. Sydney watched him carefully, his movements smooth in the morning shadows, and she slowly relaxed. Standing and slipping his jacket on, he held out a hand toward her.

She raised an eyebrow. Sark rolled his eyes, and Sydney noted somewhere in her mind how ridiculous the move made him look. "Give me the gun," he said, his boredom with her childish games obvious.

Sydney remained motionless.

"Give me the gun, _please_."

She flipped it over and handed him the empty pistol, relaxing the slightest inch. "Maybe you've learned something yet," she said.

"Yes, well." Sark pocketed the gun. "Perhaps you haven't been completely useless, Ms. Bristow." He opened the door, and without looking back, stepped outside, shutting it quietly behind him.

* * *

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